Tag Archives: Sales Career

There’s a secret to business success – which, if you’re already doing it on a regular basis, won’t be that much of a big surprise – but that’s probably only around 5% of all the salespeople out there – so I think it’s worth sharing.

It took me quite a long time to recognise this little nugget of truth for what it really is, and then distil it into a couple of memorable, tweet length sentences – but here they are.

The reason my career soared, while others around me splashed around in a muddy pool of bitterness and mediocrity – was due to this simple fact;

I went out and got business – most people want to be given business, so they can go out and get it.

Go on, read it again – it’s deeper than you think.

But that’s how my career stepped up – one rung at a time – and kept on rising.

When there didn’t appear to be any business – I found a way to create the opportunity

When there was a shortage of customers – I went out and found some prospects.

When the fishermen went home hungry and defeated, telling me not to bother even trying – the first thing I’d do was dredge the pond – in case they’d missed something.

Then I hiked over to the lake and tried again, while they all went to the pub and talked about the one that got away.

Hey, sometimes I went home with less than they did.

But they made a habit of giving up – I made a habit of never giving in.

Some will tell you the secret of success is simply rising and then staying above mediocrity.

That’s not far wrong.

I’ll add to that and say, while you’re pulling yourself above mediocrity, make sure you also develop your tenacity and positivity muscles too.

This wasn’t me being better than anyone else – or smarter, or more knowledgeable, or being given a better patch with better prospects.

It’s just that – when people gave me the opportunity (and wage) to go and grow their business – I didn’t expect them to give me leads on a plate.

I went out and found business for them – and brought it back with my tail wagging.

So the real secret is this;
Below average salespeople wait for their business to create sales leads. Above average salespeople create business opportunities, and become Sales Leaders
(Average performers, who aren’t putting in the effort, are just riding a wave of luck – which never lasts long)

You can sit at your desk just hoping, hitting the send/receive button if you like – or maybe leave it to chance that the social media campaign, website or marketing department will bring prospects directly to your door – and hey, some probably will.

But that’s the same business everyone around you has access to – including the competition. It was coming anyway – with or without a salesperson to pick it up

There’s a reason diamonds are tough to uncover– the really valuable stuff isn’t found just lying on the beach for anyone to pick up.

Fill your pipeline with pebbles if you want – but diamonds are what they’ll congratulate you for.

So where should you start – where’s all this business hiding?

You find it with new clients

You find it with disgruntled old clients

You look for new opportunities within existing clients

You portfolio sell across the board

On top of that;

Don’t moan when there’s no business – that’s your job – go and get some

Don’t treat customers like one night stands – learn how you genuinely help and watch your results prosper when you start to put that into practice.

Learn what you don’t know and get better at the stuff you do

Listen to, emulate and take advice from winners – never whiners

Stop trying to find the quick way of doing absolutely everything – find the most effective way, and then perfect it.

Do one more call, every day after what used to be your last call. Forty weeks a year, equals two hundred extra calls. If we work on one in ten, ask yourself – what would twenty more opportunities do for your pipeline?

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Thanks for reading this blog post. On my blog, I regularly write about Sales, Sales Management and Customer Service issues, topics and trends. I’d also be delighted to connect via Twitter,YouTube and of course, through Varda Kreuz Training.

One of the main reasons I lasted long enough to become successful in sales and sales management, was the simple fact that throughout my career, a few people saw my potential and had the tenacity and patience to help me see it too.

I’ve quite literally filled books with the lessons they passed on, but here are just three that made a huge difference.

I need to share this with you before we go on – when I started my career in sales, I was appallingly bad, absolutely shocking. I was cocky, unreceptive, under the illusion that I could simply glide through with a smidgeon of natural talent and a touch of charm – and I shudder at the memory.

But it turns out, that’s precisely what enabled me to write my most popular books and sales training programmes for Varda Kreuz – in fact I meet ‘young me’ fairly regularly during training workshops – and I try to distil into twenty hours what a couple of incredible mentors and bosses showed me over the course of twenty years – and I’m forever grateful for the information they shared with me.

Lesson Number 1 – Deliver Value to the Business or Get out

When I was growing up, no one would ever have called my family wealthy and by the time I hit my teens I’d still never met anyone who I’d now classify as rich, and aspired for very little other than to possibly one day own my own home and drive a car.

If I had enough for the rent, an appetising fridge and enough for a few weekend beers with the boys – I was happy enough.

My first business to business sales role was a tough education – but they invested in me with training and sales tools and in return I put my suit on every day and polished my shoes.

Just earning the flat basic wage didn’t bother me, it would have been nice to receive a little more commission every month – but if it didn’t happen it wasn’t the end of the world.

I turned up for work with a smile and hoped sales would follow me in – but if they didn’t – hey, no worries.

I have to say it came as quite a bit of a shock when they fired me.

And although I don’t remember that particular sales manager as one of my favourite bosses, he changed my outlook on sales so that I’d never fall over so stupidly ever again – after that I made sure I made a difference and that the people who mattered saw the difference I was making.

Lesson Number 2 – Understand How You Help

For a good few years I walked in to see customers and sold AT them. Actually, that’s how everyone I knew sold – it’s still how most people I meet sell to this day.

Even after a week of solid, expensive, highly focused sales training with a big multi-national company – I had no concept of how I helped anyone.

We didn’t talk about it, we weren’t trained on it – no one internally saw it as a requirement or cared that it might be a better way of doing things – or produce more business.

It was a buyer called Terry Wiseman who helped me see it one Christmas.

Terry worked for a wholesaler – and told me that my generic Christmas Promotion was a bag of ****, pointless, not fit for purpose and that (correctly) it had been thought up by marketeers on the fifth floor who had never met a customer in their life.

That year I sold 5 boxes through Terry’s business.

The following Christmas I held up my hands, admitted that my ignorance towards customer buying motives and arrogant attitude wasn’t going to deliver either of us any bonus – and that’s when he opened my eyes.

He showed me why people bought my products, how they used them, what they needed them for – what flicked their switch, the quantity that they liked to purchase, the add-on purchases that could be acquired with the right bundle deal.

I sold 10,000 boxes that Christmas

Actually, it only occurred to me while writing this, that this lesson was delivered by a Wiseman at Christmas – and let me tell you, it was worth its weight in gold – Terry helped me see something I would later describe like this;

People buy drills because they want to create holes – bad salespeople present drills, great salespeople help them achieve the hole they need.

Lesson Number 3 – Make Sure You Can Go Back Again

So now my career is going through the roof – I mean flying.

Company-wide memos referencing my big wins are coming from the Managing Director’s office, I’m getting personal letters of thanks from the chairman and I’m regularly asked to host sales meetings to share my insight and techniques with the rest of the business.

I’ve had two promotions in six months and I’m being considered for another – a big one – before Easter.

And that was when my Sales Director – Craig Campbell – dropped a bombshell during my end-of-year appraisal.

“I know what you’re doing Chris – and it’s time to stop.”

“What do you mean ‘what I’m doing’? I’ll tell you what I’m doing – I’m knocking every sales target out of the park, I’m securing previously thought unwinnable contracts on a monthly basis, and I’m getting listings that no one has got anywhere near achieving in the last twenty years – that’s what I’m doing!”

The memory of his stare fills me with a chill to this day – and still makes me want to shut up immediately and leaves me feeling stupid twenty years after the event.

He put his pen on the appraisal document and slowly and precisely pointed out that my search for glory was about to fall flat on its own fat backside.

Yes – I had a knack for helping people, delivering the solution they needed and writing proposals that people actually wanted to read – and yes that had led to business going through the roof.

But that was the last time a customer ever heard from me.

Even when things went wrong or didn’t work out as well as I’d promised – I left their calls unanswered – I was too busy chasing the company-wide recognition, the next big win.

But that industry – just like every other – was too small to treat existing customers so badly.

My thinking was at least six months short of short-term thinking.

Contracts and tenders would come round again in a matter of months, new product launches would require presentations to the same groups of people, even if I moved to another business appointments would be few and far between because I’d lost their trust – and testimonials and referrals were just about to dry up and never return.

He also pointed out, that further down the line when I had my own sales team to manage, their reputation would be tainted by mine and no one would want to see them either, so that would end in failure too.

Craig shared all that with me, I nodded in embarrassment, his expression stretched into a smile – he told me that my future was bright and that I should do something about getting it back on track – and then he bought me a drink to toast my imminent success.

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Thanks for reading this blog post. On my blog, I regularly write about Sales, Sales Management and Customer Service issues, topics and trends.

There are 5 questions below, which if you answer honestly, will give some indication on what effect you genuinely have on your sales figures.

To my mind there are far too many people out there, earning the well-deserved wages of someone who has had a positive impact on the continuous prosperity and profitability of their company – but whose wages are only affordablebecause of the continued prosperity and profitability of their company.

Subtle difference in words – huge impact on business

Funnily enough, I know a few dentists who would score higher than some professional salespeople on these next 5 questions, and yet they would never consider themselves to have the skills or confidence to deliver the results a professional salesperson would be expected to in the same situation.

Funny then, that so many salespeople – who don’t really have any effect on customer choice or end of year sales figures – believe that they are ultimately responsible (and take most of the credit) for the success of entire companies.

Take a look at the questions below and rate yourself – honestly – by scoring:

2 for YES, ALWAYS:

1 for MAYBE, SOMETIMES: and

0 for NO, NEVER

1. If no one did your job, would prospects and customers decide to stop buying from your company?

2. Would YOU happily buy your children’s medical insurance or organise your mother’s nursing home requirements with a salesperson who treats their customers in exactly the same way that you treat your prospects and customers from beginning to end?

3. Can you explain to prospects why you are a better alternative than lower priced competitors?

4. If you were aware that someone would definitely benefit from your product or service – but they’d convinced themselves that they don’t want what you’re selling – should they still be a classed as a prospect?

5. Before presenting and selling your product or service as the cure do you seek to fully understand the customer’s symptoms (pain, underlying problems, needs)?

Scores

10 Points – Yep, you’re in sales and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what that actually means to you and your potential customers – nice to meet you.

7 – 9 Points – Clearly, your job involves some real sales work, and by the look of it – you’re really quite good at what you do. But be honest with yourself – which question didn’t you like the look of (and why)?

4 – 6 Points –Two possibilities here; You’re either doing the best you can and would like someone to help you get a little better or your “companybrand” sells itself and you’re just simply facilitating its movement.

1- 3 Points – Once again, two possibilities; You’re either doing the very best you can and would really, really like someone to help you improve or you thought sales was an easier option than getting a real job and didn’t understand most of the questions.

0 Points – Three possibilities this time: You’re either a conman, have no idea what your job actually entails or just decided to read this article out of idle curiosity.

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Thanks for reading this article. On my blog, I regularly write about Sales, Sales Management and Customer Service issues, topics and trends.

This is THE ultimate field sales resource, breaking the sales process down into four, easy to understand stages; Earn the right; Ask the appropriate questions; Solve the problem & Execute the solution.

Now updated with even more down to earth, field tested, hit-the-ground-running advice; Selling with EASE – The Ultimate Field Sales Handbook can help you become more effective, more productive, more successful and happier in what you do – FACT.

If you are looking for your first sales position, already in a field sales role or a sales manager looking for new ways to focus the team, this book will prove invaluable.

When I was a Sales Director looking for sales trainers to improve my team – to give them the great start that I’d had within larger organisations – I wanted someone that completely understood the role of a field sales team and the market in which I operated.

I didn’t find them!

One of the main reasons I formed Varda Kreuz Training and the On Trade Sales Academy stemmed from those frustrations and they were reflected in my reasoning for writing this handbook – there simply isn’t enough out there to help field sales people, especially not for the FMCG* side of things.

Sure there’s lots of generic work, but nothing for someone stumbling into their first field sales job or looking for a useful refresher.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me on the office line – +44 (0) 844 293 9777 – if I’m around I’ll take the call, if I’m training one of our delightful reception staff will take your details and I’ll call you back as soon as I’m free.

You can also e-mail me (ultimatefieldsales@vardakreuztraining.com) with any suggestions for the third edition, your thoughts on this one or just for a general chat regarding field sales team training – either way I’d love to hear from you.